MASTER OF METAPHYSICS

Universal Life Church Seminary

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www.ulceminary.org

Universal Life Church Seminary

"Doing that which is right."

~~~Forgiveness~~~

Hello!

This is a sample of week two of Spirit-Quest. This is just one of 30 different lessons you will receive each week in your mail box if you order this course.. At the end of the program, you will receive a Master of Metaphysics degree. Throughout this Spirit-Quest, you will learn some miraculous techniques to help you with your spiritual journey. Many people have paid thousands of dollars to learn the secrets you are going to be mastering over the next months.

Today’s discourse is about forgiveness. This is a concept that we have all heard a lot about throughout our lives. It’s especially prevalent in most religions, but do we really know exactly what it is and how to achieve it?

Forgiveness is, simply put, about letting go. Releasing the wrong done to you, or by you. This is a very simple concept, but often very difficult to achieve. Forgiveness is a choice.

To withhold forgiveness is to choose to remain in pain. Remember, you always have choice.

Forgiveness is for you, not for the other. The person you refuse to forgive. . . owns you! You have all of your energy invested in your anger and resentment, when you could be using it for creating wonderful things for yourself. Instead, you’re letting the other person hold you hostage.

How about if someone has an affair? You can still choose to forgive. You can also leave. Just because you choose to forgive, does not mean you have to stay in the relationship. That is only and always your choice. The choice to forgive is only and always yours.

Let’s talk about what happens when someone does you wrong. At first, you feel angry, betrayed, insulted, hurt, etc.

Next, you want to stop feeling that way, so you look outward to the person who caused you this pain. You want to yell at them, insult them back, cause them the same sort of pain they caused you.

In other words, Revenge.

This is a normal reaction when you’ve been hurt. Once you’ve moved beyond the initial feeling, you might (and I say, might) consider the concept of forgiving that person.

You might possibly start hearing a dialogue in your head with questions like, “Why should I forgive him/her?” “How can I ever forgive him/her/myself for doing that?”

When you hold a grudge and don’t forgive, the pain just sits there. Like an acid. Burning its way through every aspect of your life.

Holding onto a grudge is like drinking poison and waiting for the other person to die.

When you feel hurt by something, do not forgive for "their" sake. This doesn’t do any good. You must do it for yourself. If they never come to you and ask for your forgiveness, then that is their choice. They do not NEED to be forgiven; it is you who need to forgive.

An example: “When I was sick with cancer, I had an unreasonable anger against my mother. I didn’t want her in the room, in the house or on the planet. To resolve this issue, I sought the assistance of a therapist who did past life regressions. She took me, one step at a time, to a lifetime that had both my mom and me in it. In that lifetime, my mother (in a male body) accidentally killed the father I had in that lifetime. I felt certain (she) did it on purpose and judged her harshly. I got everyone I knew to run her out of town. As it turned out, it was not done on purpose and was my then-father’s time to die. I instantly let it go. Upon returning to see my mom, I felt no anger, resentment or need to punish her. I let go of the grudge, forgave her for her actions and forgave myself for my judgment and what I did about them. We’ve been very close ever since.”

We’re going to be discussing some exercises throughout this and the next several discourses to help releasing hurts. First though, there are some things you need to know about how it happened in the first place.

By ‘it’, I mean the pain.

Regarding pain, I have some good news and I have some bad news. The news is: You are responsible for the pain.

This is both good news and bad news. It’s bad news because you are party to the pain and the pain only gets in because there is a place inside you that invited it in.

It’s good news because if you let the pain in, then the pain is part of you – YOURS - and… you can only change things that are part of you.

This warrants repeating:

You can only change things that are part of you.

You can’t change other people – you can only change yourself. So if it’s part of you – OWN IT!

The pain gets in because there is, for lack of a better term, a ‘button’ that gets pushed. It’s like being on an elevator. The elevator has a zillion floors and buttons for all of them. When the button gets pushed, it lets you right onto that floor. The same is true with pain, when someone sees, on some level, that the button exists, it’s easy to zero in on it, push it, and just let themselves in.

This is good news and throughout this course, you are going to learn a number of ways to release pain and release the way the pain gets in.

This is what I mean about you being party to the pain. The pain wouldn’t get in if the button wasn’t there. The insult, the hurt, etc. would have no place to go and would pass right through.

This is also true when you have done something you can’t forgive yourself for. You have another button inside you that tells you that you’re bad or that you’re not good enough and that you deserve whatever bad things happen to you.

Buttons like these are what allows you to not like yourself.

(This concept of entry applies more to personal pain, rather than events like 9/11, the Holocaust, Saddam Hussein, etc. The exercises to release the pain, however, will help for these things as well.)

It is possible for EVERYTHING to be forgiven!

Be aware, that God loves you. You were created by perfection, in perfection, for perfection. Your success is guaranteed.

Now that we know how the pain got in, let’s talk about how to let it out. When you do this, you must remember that once you have forgiven something, you forever give up any right to revenge.

This means that you have given up holding onto it. You don’t get to bring it up later, throw it in anyone’s face, or use it as a bargaining chip in any further communications. Forgiveness helps you move forward. No one benefits from forgiveness more than the one who forgives!

When you think about forgiving, there are a few things to remember that might help. The first is the one we previously mentioned:

That the pain is only there because you let it in.

The second thing to remember is:

People are usually not AGAINST you, but merely FOR themselves. i.e. it’s usually not about you.

The third is probably the most important in terms of intellectually letting go of things:

People react, behave, do things, as a consequence of their own pain.

This last one can be really helpful to remember when something happens to you or when you do something to cause someone else pain. Everybody has pain. Most people aren’t aware of it and those that are don’t know what to do with it.

It’s not personal.

Even when it feels completely personal, they tell you it’s about you and it’s only happening to you, it’s really probably not.

What I mean by this is that if that other person didn’t have buttons to push, the pain wouldn’t have been able to get in.

It may be true that you pushed their buttons, but you did so out of your own pain. Your job then becomes to release your own pain so you don’t feel it and you don’t inflict it on others.

Release your pain and you won’t have need to cause any pain to others. AND If they release theirs, there’s nothing that will stick.

You still have responsibility for your actions, as do others for theirs, and you should still apologize when you’ve hurt someone, but that’s not what we’re talking about here.

How To Get Rid Of The Pain

There are different techniques for releasing and forgiving and we’re going to talk about several of them now.

The first technique is an awareness exercise.

1. Give some thought to what gave you pain. Was it words said, deeds done, something not said, not done, not felt, what? What was the trigger?

2. Next, ask yourself why it causes you pain. Was a trust betrayed? Were you rejected on some level? Were your hopes dashed? Think about how that pain manifests.

3. Give some thought or let your feelings go towards the person who ‘did ‘ this. Where was it coming from? What buttons were pushed on his/her end? Why did it happen?

4. Put yourself in that person’s shoes. Have you ever done anything like that? Could you possibly imagine, given what you know of their life experience, ever doing something similar? Can you, without condoning their actions, perhaps understand it a little? Have you ever cut someone off on the freeway? Have you ever spoken without thinking or said something that came out wrong?

5. Ask yourself what your role in the situation was. Were you acting out of some of your own pain? Was there something you said or did that perhaps caused the other person pain? Would you have done something differently if you’d known the outcome?

6. Take responsibility for your own role. Do you need to apologize? Can you forgive yourself? Sit down, close your eyes and imagine a soap bubble in front of you. Put your pain in the bubble – all of it – and let it float away. When it’s out of your immediate area, pop it.

7. Ask God to help you. Invite God to shine a golden light of forgiveness onto you and the others involved.

Another technique, is called the forgiveness letter.

I first heart it introduced by John Grey and it involves writing 3 letters.

The first letter is called the ‘feeling’ letter.

Write a letter to the person, place or thing that you are upset with. It can be a letter to a person who offended you, your body that is not doing what you want it to, or your house for burning down. Wherever your pain sits. It doesn’t matter if the recipient of the letter is alive or able to read the letter or not. Just write the letter and let your feelings of hurt, anger, betrayal, disappointment, etc, flow onto the paper.

The second letter is called the ‘response’ letter.

This is a letter that you write next that is from the recipient to you. It’s a letter addressed to you that says exactly the loving words you need/want to hear. It doesn’t matter if they are words that would ever be uttered or not, just write what you would like to hear.

The third letter is called the ‘forgiveness’ letter.

The forgiveness letter is a short letter from you to the offending party. The letter should contain words of forgiveness and love. If you’re not yet ready to do that, then tell them you want to forgive them. Continue writing letters until you are in a space to forgive them.

If you are finding that the anger and hurt are too much to put into words and you’re just too upset to look at the situation yet, then I have one more basic series of exercises to help you release some of your anger and hurt.

Get a dozen eggs. Or maybe two or three dozen. Find an empty field, or alleyway or at least someplace you can hose things off. Hold each egg in your hand and imagine all the hurt, anger, disappointment, frustration, hate, fury, etc, is in that egg.

Then hurl it against something hard.

Hear, feel and experience the beautiful splat sound that it makes on contact.

Allow the emotions you put into that egg to be released from your body and your aura.

Repeat as often as needed.

Your Assignment This Week

Your assignment this week is look at the areas in your life where you are withholding forgiveness.

Do the exercises to release your grudges and give yourself the gift of forgiveness.

Be good to yourself all week.

And most importantly remember:

You are a perfect being.

God Loves You.

You were created in perfection,

by perfection,

for perfection.

Your success is guaranteed.

Talk to you next week!

Below are some comments from people who are taking the course. Lessons require action on the part of the students and reflection on those lessons are posted for discussion.